Charles Kennedy

Charles Kennedy, (born November 25, 1959, Inverness, Scotland—died June 1, 2015, Fort William), Scottish politician and leader of the Liberal Democrats from 1999 to 2006.

Kennedy received his early education at schools in the Scottish Highlands and matriculated at the University of Glasgow; he also studied at Indiana University in the United States in the early 1980s as a Fulbright scholar. He interrupted his study abroad to return to Scotland in May 1983 to stand in that year’s general election as the candidate of the short-lived Social Democratic Party (SDP) for the seat representing the vast, thinly populated regions of Ross, Cromarty, and Skye. To widespread astonishment, not least his own, he captured the seat from the Conservatives, and at age 23 he entered the House of Commons as its youngest member.

An engaging, witty, quick-thinking, and irreverent politician, Kennedy soon became one of the SDP’s most regular spokesmen on radio and television. In addition to appearing on news and current-affairs programs, he could also be seen on lighter programs, such as quiz shows. When the majority of the SDP decided in 1988 to merge with the Liberal Party against the wishes of SDP leader David Owen, Kennedy became a prominent member of the merged party, the Liberal Democrats. Three years later he was elected party president. He held the position for four years before stepping down. In 1995 Kennedy became vice-chairman of the European Movement, an all-party campaign supporting greater European integration.

In January 1999 Paddy Ashdown, who had led the Liberal Democrats since 1988, announced that he would step down that summer. Kennedy was one of five candidates to contest the succession, but it soon became clear that the two leading candidates would be Kennedy and Simon Hughes, the MP for the inner-London constituency of Southwark and Bermondsey. Although not as close personally to Prime Minister Tony Blair of the Labour Party as Ashdown had been, Kennedy was effectively the continuity candidate. He promised to continue Ashdown’s strategy of working closely with the Labour government on some issues, such as constitutional reform, while opposing it on others, such as social policy (where the Liberal Democrats criticized the government for spending too little). Hughes, on the other hand, argued for a change of strategy. He wanted the party to revert to the traditional Liberal posture of equal opposition to Labour and the Conservatives. In a closely fought contest, the result of which was announced on August 9, Kennedy defeated Hughes on the fourth ballot (the other three candidates had been eliminated earlier) by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent. Kennedy later led the party to its best electoral performance in nearly 80 years when the Liberal Democrats seated 63 MPs in 2005. He continued on as leader of the party until, amid controversy over his struggle with alcohol addiction, he resigned in 2006.

In 2007 Kennedy was elected president of the European Movement in Britain. He was reelected to Parliament in 2010 to represent the redistricted Ross, Skye, and Lochaber but lost that seat in the 2015 U.K. general election that saw the Liberal Democrats’ presence in Westminster fall from 57 seats to 8 seats.